Analysis
NORTH KOREA'S MISSILE TESTS AND THE INTERNATIONAL REACTION
by James Cotton, Professor of Politics in the University of New
South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy campus, Canberra, and
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University.
Despite US warnings that testing the Tae’podong 1998
long range missile would be a ‘provocative act’, North Korea went
ahead on 5 July 2006 and test-fired seven missiles over the East Sea/Sea of
Japan. Japan moved quickly to impose bilateral sanctions on Pyongyang, including
banning ferry links, diplomatic visits and charter flights, and further international
reaction highlighted the lack of progress on building security in Northeast
Asia through the six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States,
China, Japan and Russia.
North Korea’s reaction to the initial diplomatic manoeuvres
was uncompromising. On 6 July the Foreign Ministry asserted that, because
North Korea was not bound by any bilateral or multilateral arms limitation
agreements, the missile tests were ‘its legitimate right as a sovereign
state’. Previous undertakings to the US and Japan to observe a moratorium
on missile launches had been invalidated by the lack of progress on official
recognition from Tokyo and by Washington’s ‘hostile policy’,
manifest in such measures as the imposition of financial sanctions. North
Korea further claimed that its missile program was a factor preserving the
status quo in the region and that it remained committed to the six-party process.
On 15 July the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution
1695/2006, which condemned the tests and urged North Korea to the return to
the six-party process and to its obligations to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In response,
Pyongyang categorically stated its intention to defy the Council which, it
insisted, had only adopted the resolution because of US hostility.
In fact, the UN’s response to the incident was significant
because this time China (in a formal sense still an ally of North Korea) was
prepared to endorse the resolution, thereby associating all the participants
in the six-party process in the censure of Pyongyang’s WMD and missile
proliferation activities. The Security Council did not, however, prescribe
specific measures in the event of North Korean defiance of its resolution,
with China taking exception to any mention of the Security Council’s
powers to maintain peace and security.
So it has been left to individual countries to implement
the requirements of Resolution 1695. Japan is considering further financial
restrictions on businesses dealing with North Korea. The United States has
announced that limitations upon travel to and investment in North Korea might
be re-imposed. With North-South Korean trade running at over $0.5 billion
annually, there is a vocal debate in South Korea on how far to proceed with
restrictions upon economic linkages with the North. Food aid has been withheld
and the Roh Moo-hyun administration characterised the missile test as ‘irresponsible’,
though a presidential spokesman also criticised Japan’s reaction as
excessive.
The firm reaction of the Australian government was consistent
with the positions taken by the US and Japan. In line with Canberra’s
commitment to non-proliferation and its active membership of the Missile Technology
Control Regime (MTCR), it condemned North Korea’s actions as a provocation
and indicative of an inability to keep international commitments. Foreign
Minister Downer announced that further restrictions would be placed on the
travel of DPRK officials to Australia, and after consultations in the United
States and Northeast Asian capitals, the convening of the six-party process
without North Korea was mooted.
Unlike the confrontation between North Korea and the IAEA
in the early 1990s, the current crisis elicited a surprisingly uncompromising
response from the Security Council. No longer assured of China’s unconditional
patronage, North Korea may be much less able to manoeuvre between the other
members of the multilateral six-party forum. And those in the Untied States
who advocate increasing the pressure on Pyongyang can now cite UN endorsement
of their views.
Links:
RULING THROUGH EDUCATION? THE PROSPECTS FOR AUSTRALIAN-INDIAN RELATIONS
by Tim Allender, Lecturer in History of Education
and History Curriculum at the University of Sydney t.allender@edfac.usyd.edu.au
In late 2004 I was invited to give a paper at an ‘India
Education Forum’ organised by the Department of Education Science and
Training at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra. The discussions demonstrated the
complex way Australian government instrumentalities were connecting with India,
even without the powerful financial clout of a Ford Foundation in the US or
the long-standing cultural links offered by the British Council of India and
the British Library in each major provincial capital in India.
In recent years, to compensate for this deficit, there has
been a tendency by Australian universities to offer places to bright, financially
independent postgraduate students wanting an internationally recognised credential.
Academics in India must wonder if this strategy signals a new colonial project
of poaching the best, especially as our visa requirements and our institutional
preferences are for PhD students only, even though these academics are suggesting
to us that many more students could come at the Masters level. Letting these
students into Australia would offer a more spontaneous and responsive educational
exchange that is intellectually enriching for both countries.
While India leads the world in such fields as Astrophysics
and computer software, there remain enormous hurdles in education, such as
the persistence of scheduled tribes and castes, poor recognition by the state
of the professionalism of teachers, privatisation, struggling literacy rates
and a long standing resistance by unemployed graduates to vocational education.
These questions offer exciting possibilities for future intellectual
engagement between Australia and India, particularly given India’s earlier
contribution to our thinking on education. It is worth recalling that the
British in India attempted imaginative educational experimentation to improve
the lot of poor village children even before they attempted the same in England.
Most significantly, in the mid-nineteenth century, state-sponsored schooling
generated for the first time ethical and pedagogical positions that have been
rehearsed and refined ever since in both countries and also throughout the
rest of the old empire, including the former Australian colonies. My book,
Ruling Through Education: The Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab
(New Delhi, New Dawn Press, 2006), traces much of this discourse, at least
for north India. It posits that British-controlled education failed well before
the national movement challenged foreign educational practice in the early
twentieth century. But it argues that these developments also helped shape
a strong indigenous voice regarding education that endures today.
As we negotiate future connections with modern-day India,
it is worth considering that it has been on the subcontinent where our own
education projects were first partly trialled. Knowing our history better
should allow us to take advantage of this rich tradition of cultural transmission
to navigate a more even handed and less instrumentalist approach to students,
academics and educational institutions on the subcontinent. We may still yet
have something to offer each other in terms of social and economic improvement
that goes beyond the mere student money market.
Links:
Profile
TThis month we feature Professor Andrew MacIntyre,
Director, Crawford School of Economics & Government, ANU College of Asia
and the Pacific, andrew.macintyre@anu.edu.au
Q: When did you become interested in studying
Asia and why?
A: At the beginning of high school. Cronulla High School
offered Indonesian and Asian Studies and this opened the door for me. Why?
As random a factor as my parents encouraged me to study a language and Indonesian
was the most engaging of the options on offer. High School was really the
key for me. This led to travel, and university more or less followed.
Q: What are your current preoccupations?
A: I have three main preoccupations at the moment. One is
building the Crawford School as Australia’s first graduate policy school
that is on a scale to compete with the other major professional schools in
the northern hemisphere. Our research on Asia and ability to attract premium
students from Asia is key to this. My second preoccupation is also institutional:
we have succeeded in securing major government funding (initially, $6 million
over 3 years) for collaborative research on governance issues in Indonesia.
This is a major undertaking involving collaborators from around Australia
and Indonesia. Key components of the project will be making generous funding
openly available (on a competitive basis) for projects tackling major governance
issues, and nurturing a new generation of younger scholars interested in exploring
governance related topics in Indonesia. Finally, in terms of my personal research,
I am working on comparative projects at the moment: one revisiting the whole
crony capitalist debate across East Asia, and the other reviewing the political
science, economics and legal literatures on property rights and development.
Q: How do these fit into the contemporary
scene?
A: If I was to try to give a single answer that applies across
all of these preoccupations, it would be: taking what social science has to
offer and bringing it to bear on some of the big policy issues confronting
our region. Notwithstanding the explosion of information and “talk”,
my sense is that there is a great demand for fresh ideas in Australia and
around Asia, provided that they are packaged in ways that are accessible to
the target audience.
Q: What are your hopes for Asian studies
in Australia?
A: I could be wrong, but my sense is that scholars are listened
to less and less. Government tends to view the academy with polite disdain,
the media mostly turns to it for cheap filler and business relies on its own
sources. Very rarely are academics the first port of call. I think this is
bad for all parties and contributes to the long term decline in academic funding.
Although there are certainly dangers in getting too close to end-users, to
be ignored is even worse. The Asian studies community has an enormous wealth
of insight and expertise. The challenge is making it to make it more accessible
and user-friendly without allowing it to become beholden to end-users.
Links:
Graduate of the month
Vanessa Schouten (vanessa.schouten@qsuper.qld.gov.au
) was born in the United Kingdom. She discovered Asia at the age of 18 and
for the next six years travelled in Malaysia, Thailand, China, Sri Lanka and
India, while living in Hong Kong. In the period before the handover in 1997,
Vanessa worked as public relations and sponsorship officer for the British
Council Hong Kong. She returned to the UK to complete a psychology BSc in
London and then followed a career in business and market research. Her interest
in Asia did not wane and she began studying Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese),
deciding to tackle this difficult language because it is the most widely spoken
language in Asia.
Vanessa moved to Brisbane in 2003, choosing Australia because
of its proximity to Asia and the much wider variety of post-graduate courses
on Asia offered than in the UK. She works as a market researcher while studying
for a Masters in Asian and International Studies at Griffith University and
continues to take an evening class in Putonghua. Vanessa loves her course,
where she is able to discuss global issues with colleagues. In addition, she
feels now more than ever that Asian studies is becoming of more relevance
to everyone as the world shrinks and increasingly we are affected by what
is happening in the Asian region. That sense is leading her to focus on developments
in Indochina and on the effect of security issues on trade in Asia. Not yet
finished with the Masters she is already contemplating learning a second Asian
language and doing a PhD!
Website of the month
http://www.bepress.com/asjcl/
is the website for the electronic version of the Asian Journal of Comparative
Law, a new peer-reviewed journal for Asian perspectives on the law and legal
perspectives on Asia. The journal is an initiative of the Asian Law Institute,
an association of thirteen leading law schools in Asia. Topics covered in
the first issue include Korean corporate governance, Islamic and common law
in Asia and discussions on legal education.
Recent article of interest
On 15 August, Foreign Minister Downer launched Voices
of Islam in Southeast Asia, A Contemporary Sourcebook, compiled and edited
by Greg Fealy and Virginia Hooker. http://asianstudies.anu.edu.au/weblog/index.php?/archives/60-recently-published-Voices-of-Islam-in-Southeast-Asia.html
This is the first sourcebook to present a wide selection of contemporary materials
on Islam in Southeast Asia, most of which have not previously been available
in English. The material covers six broad themes: personal expressions of
faith; Islamic law; state and governance; women and family; jihad; and interactions
with non-Muslims and the wider Muslim world. The project was made possible
by funding provided through the Australian Committee for Security Cooperation
in the Asia-Pacific http://aus-cscap.anu.edu.au/
Did you know?
The Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing
Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade has released a report into
Australia's relationship with the Republic of Korea: and developments on the
Korean peninsula. The report reviews the trading relationship with the Republic
of Korea, as well as issues such as cross-cultural understanding and relations
between Australian and Korean institutions, both government and non-government.
It also comments on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and its
potential impact of on regional trade and security. http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jfadt/korea/report/front.pdf
Diary dates
ASIA-PACIFIC MISSIONARIES: AT HOME AND ABROAD, 2nd
biennial conference, 25-27 August 2006, Canberra. The conference
will be held at the Coombs Lecture Theatre, Australian National University,
Contact: Dr Ian Welch, ian.welch@anu.edu.au
CROSS-CULTURAL CONVERSATIONS - INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
, 3 September, Melbourne. Part of the annual The Age Melbourne Writer's
Festival, this is a panel discussion with authors Glen Duncan, Romesh Gunesekera
and Christopher Kremmel in conversation with Hamish McDonald. CUB Malthouse,
113 Sturt Street, Southbank, Melbourne 03-9650 0998 http://www.mwf.com.au
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES INTERNATIONAL ALUMNI CONVENTION
2006, 13-15 September, Brisbane. The Queensland State Government,
Queensland Education and Training International (QETI) and the Office of Higher
Education, together with the combined Queensland universities, are joint hosts
for the convention called Creating a Better World: Australian Universities'
Alumni Working Together, http://www.auiac2006.org
DEMOCRACY AND THE PROMISE OF GOOD GOVERNANCE, 22-23
September, Canberra. The 24th annual Indonesia Update conference
will be held at the Coombs Lecture Theatre, Australian National University.
The Update is free but registration is required. For details see http://rspas.anu.edu.au/economics/ip/IU06/
TRANSNATIONAL CRIME IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION,
workshop, 6 October, Sydney. The Centre for Policing, Intelligence
and Counter Terrorism (PICT) at Macquarie University is holding a one-day
course to consider the nature of transnational crime in the Asia-Pacific from
the perspective of the region's rapidly changing role in the global economy.
Cost: $650+GST. (Student discount available). For further information, contact:
Marijana Wright: (02) 9850 4712; mwright@access.mq.edu.au
ENERGY SECURITY SYMPOSIUM. 11 October , Canberra.
This symposium will explore the implication for Australia's strategic environment
of the drive for energy security by nations around the world. See http://www.homelandsecurity.org.au/energy/
CELEBRATE AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIAN STYLE in Shanghai,
21-28 October. Set at Shanghai's famous lifestyle, entertainment
and boutique retail venue Xintiandi, Celebrate Australia will feature a week
long program of unique activities and promotions spotlighting the finer side
of Australian expertise, lifestyle and innovation. The week coincides with
several other high profile events in Shanghai, including the Australia China
Business Council’s 2nd Forum in Shanghai on 25 October and the Australian
Ballet performing 'Swan Lake' from 27-30 October. Australian companies are
invited to apply to participate in this celebration by registering by 11 August.
See specific mission service packages provided by Austrade: http://www.austrade.gov.au/corporate/layout/0,,0_S1-1_CORPXID0040-2_-3_PWB110830402-4_-5_-6_-7_,00.html
or contact
julie-anne.nichols@austrade.gov.au
at the Austrade mission in Shanghai.
TRANSNATIONAL CRIME IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION,
workshop, 6 October, Sydney. The Centre for Policing, Intelligence
and Counter Terrorism (PICT) at Macquarie University is holding a one-day
course to consider the nature of transnational crime in the Asia-Pacific from
the perspective of the region's rapidly changing role in the global economy.
Cost: $650+GST. (Student discount available). For further information, contact:
Marijana Wright: (02) 9850 4712; mwright@access.mq.edu.au
CELEBRATE AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIAN STYLE in Shanghai,
21-28 October. Set at Shanghai's famous lifestyle, entertainment
and boutique retail venue Xintiandi, Celebrate Australia will feature a week
long program of unique activities and promotions spotlighting the finer side
of Australian expertise, lifestyle and innovation. The week coincides with
several other high profile events in Shanghai, including the Australia China
Business Council’s 2nd Forum in Shanghai on 25 October and the Australian
Ballet performing 'Swan Lake' from 27-30 October. Australian companies are
invited to apply to participate in this celebration by registering by 11 August.
See specific mission service packages provided by Austrade: http://www.austrade.gov.au/corporate/layout/0,,0_S1-1_CORPXID0040-2_-3_PWB110830402-4_-5_-6_-7_,00.html
or contact
julie-anne.nichols@austrade.gov.au
at the Austrade mission in Shanghai.
THIRD WORLD CONGRESS OF KOREAN STUDIES, 27-30 October
2006, Jejudo island, South Korea. The theme of the largest Korean
studies conference in the world is 'Cultural Interaction with Korea: From
Silk Road to Korean Wave'. For further information, see http://www.aks.ac.kr/eng_home
ASIA-PACIFIC TRIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, December
2006, Brisbane. The Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT)
will be the opening exhibition at the new Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.
APT 2006 will present the work of over 30 artists from Asia, Australia and
the Pacific. It will feature a performance and cinema program, as well as
a children’s festival. See http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/apt
MEDIA: POLICIES, CULTURES AND FUTURES IN THE ASIA
PACIFIC REGION, 27-29 November, Perth. The organisers of the 2006
Signature Event conference for the Australia Research Council's Asia Pacific
Futures Research Network (APFRN), organised by the Media-Asia Research Group
welcome proposals for individual papers as well as workshops and panels from
government, industry and community groups in addition to the academic community.
See http://www.MediaAsiaConference.humanities.curtin.edu.au.
A limited number of scholarships are available (deadline 30 June).
THE AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE 30 November to 2 December 2006, Dunedin.
The conference is entitled ‘Southern Perspectives on Development: Dialogue
or Division?’ is to be held at the University of Otago, Further information
is available from http://www.devnet.org.nz
or contact devnet2006@geography.otago.ac.nz
WORLD WITHOUT WALLS: 21st Century Perspectives on
East and West, 3-7 December 2006, Sydney. The Oriental Society of
Australia (OSA) is holding a fiftieth anniversary, international conference
from 3-7 December. The conference title ‘World Without Walls’
reflects the belief of the conference organisers that the study of humanities,
the arts and social sciences without Asia is incomplete. The conference is
designed to break down traditional geographic country-based studies by organising
panel discussions thematically, and bringing together scholars from different
backgrounds to discuss common problems. University of Sydney; COST: $380 per
person ($300 Early Bird Registration) ENQUIRIES: OSA2006 Conference Committee,
OSA2006@arts.usyd.edu.au. See
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/conference/OSA2006
You are welcome to advertise Asia-related events in this
space. Send details to: fbeddie@ozemail.com.au.
Feedback
What would be useful for you? Human interest stories, profiles
of successful graduates of Asian studies, more news about what's on, moderated
discussions on topical issues? Send your ideas to fbeddie@ozemail.com.au
About the ASAA
The Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) promotes
the study of Asian languages, societies, cultures, and politics in Australia,
supports teaching and research in Asian studies and works towards an understanding
of Asia in the community at large. It publishes the Asian Studies Review
journal and holds a biennial conference.
The ASAA believes there is an urgent need to develop a strategy to preserve,
renew and extend Australian expertise about Asia. It has called on the government
to show national leadership in the promotion of Australia’s Asia knowledge
and skills. See Maximizing Australia's Asia Knowledge Repositioning and
Renewal of a National Asset http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/asia-knowledge-book-v70.pdf
Asian Currentsis published by the
Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ASAA/
thanks to a grant from the International Centre of Excellence for Asia Pacific
Studies (ICEAPS) http://iceaps.anu.edu.au.
It is edited by Francesca Beddie. The editorial board consists of Robert Cribb,
ASAA President, Michele Ford, ASAA Secretary, Mina Roces, ASAA Publications
officer, Tamara Jacka, ASAA Council member.
